Blog your way through Writer’s Block

Blog your way through Writer’s Block

Blogging is all the rage at the moment and it’s being used in many different ways. Businesses are using blogs as a way to drive traffic to their websites and inform readers of new products, services or special offers they currently have. Individuals are blogging everything from the milestones in their child’s life to share with family and friends, to the minutiae of their everyday lives – rather like recording events in a journal but sending it out across cyberspace. For writers however, a blog can be more than a way of recording life’s events, it can be tool to help get over the worst hiccup in the writing profession – writer’s block.

Writer’s block hits most writers at one time or another. Usually it happens quite unexpectedly and at the most inconvenient time possible! It doesn’t matter how long a writer tries to force themselves to continue working on their writing project, once writer’s block takes hold, the project grinds to a halt until the block is released and the creative muse can start working once again. Blogging can help this process in a number of ways.
Firstly, writing a blog entry doesn’t require any special thought process or concentration. It isn’t an especially creative process. A writer can just log into their blog site, start a new entry and type about whatever comes into their mind. It could be about how they feel about the writer’s block making them get behind in their work schedule; it could be about the project itself; it might be about something completely unrelated such as a memory triggered by the weather. All that is important is that words start flowing onto the screen, trying to release whatever is causing the writer’s block.

Secondly, the blog entry can be about something that’s in the news, or someone on the street; an opinion which may be the start of another article, or a letter to the local newspaper. If the writer is a fiction writer, then the blog could be used to write down ideas for how this news item could be used in the current plot – or whether it is something that starts an entire new novel idea formulating on the screen. It doesn’t matter what it is, all that matters is that the muse starts moving.

Lastly, the blog could be a record of the writer’s block journey itself. Each time writer’s block occurs, the writer opens the blog and makes a record of what they were doing at the time the block occurred, what time it was, and what they think caused it. Keeping a record of this might not only reactivate the muse into working through the block, but it might also start to show any similarities that occur between the episodes of writer’s block.

Blogging is something that can be done for fun or money, for personal gain or individual satisfaction, but if a writer can use it successfully to release their creativity from writer’s block, then a blog is an invaluable tool that every writer should consider setting up.

Katie-Anne Gustafsson spent many years in business administration before becoming a WAHM where she learned many of the organisational skills and tools she needs to effectively balance the demands for her daily life.